The November Girl

by Lydia Kang

  He’d asked questions, wondering what I was becoming, never coming close enough to the Duluth city limits to retrieve the answers himself. I wrote back, but the responses that arrived afterward gave no indication that he read them at all, or cared about their contents. He was a one-way street of words on paper.

  “Hector? Are you okay?” The birthday boy’s father had put his hand on my shoulder. It was heavy with pity and radiated this nauseating warmth. I’d turned around and knocked it away violently. My fishing pole had fallen with a messy splash into the pond. I don’t remember the rest of the day. Didn’t matter anyway. For me, the party was over.

  The wind picks up on the dock, and I stand to cast into the water. My hands are cold and shake with nervousness, which is stupid. There is no one here watching me make a fool of myself fishing. Well, except for the girl. I scan the shoreline carefully, searching for any glimpse of human anywhere. In the distance, I spy a thin curl of white smoke coming from the shoreline trees about a mile away, but then it disappears.

  My first attempts at casting my rod are ridiculous. I forget to let go of the release button too late, and the lure winds jerkily around the tip of my rod four times. Another time, the bait plops straight down into the water and snags on a mossy stick. After a few more casts, I manage to get it out and away from the dock. As the little white and red ball bobs on the surface of the water, I smile grimly. I don’t need anyone to teach me how to do this.

  I end up sitting on the end of the pier when nothing happens after the first twenty minutes. My nose runs from the cold and I wipe it on my jacket arm. Occasionally, something twitches and tugs the end of the line, but I reel in nothing. It’s like the fish know that there’s nothing but death waiting, so why bother? A rubber worm isn’t worth it.

  When there’s nothing but you and a lot of silence, your head ends up filling with crap you didn’t want to be reminded of. Instead, I try to think about the girl. I wonder where she is. Who she is. Why she’s here. What she eats.

  But mostly, I wonder who she’s running away from. Why else would she be on Isle Royale?

  My mind fills with the stuff you see on the evening news, and it makes my stomach burn. I can’t think of an answer that isn’t horrible, so I make up all sorts of fantastical stories about her, like she’d run away from a Florida circus where she was forced to do backflips off elephants all day. Or that she’s a biology illustrator who’s drawing different kinds of fungus for a living.

  I have no one else to keep me company. Soon, the curve of her cheek and the glint of her gray eyes become so familiar. Her eyelashes are wispy. Her eyebrows curve slightly upward in the middle, making her seem like she’s always about to ask a question, or doesn’t understand the one you just asked. She’s a little scrawny, like she could seriously use a steak dinner. I could describe her to a police sketch artist, if I had to. And then I wonder, what crime is she capable of committing?

  Huh.

  Killing mosquitoes is the only thing I can imagine.

  Hours go by. The sun is getting low, and I’m a little panicked at having caught nothing. Just as I stand to pull in the line, a mighty tug yanks on my fishing pole. I almost drop it in the water, then pull it back with my sweaty hands and reel as fast as I can. I yank the tip of the rod up every few seconds, zipping my catch in, and then a flash of silver breaks the water and a tail flips spray into the air. I whoop out loud, then reel even faster.

  “Please, please, please,” I pray to nobody. Afraid I’ll push the release button by accident, I grab the line when the fish is only a few feet from the tip of the rod.

  God, it’s beautiful. And really fucking small. It’s maybe seven inches long, barely over a pound, shiny greenish-gray with cream-colored speckles all over and a slightly hooked mouth. My lure is sunk into the side of its mouth. Right where the barb juts out, there’s blood. It’s red like mine, which momentarily surprises me.

  It thrashes around so much that I put it down on the pier and pull out my knife.

  “Sorry. It’s you or me, little guy.” I raise the blunt end of my knife above its head. But I hesitate. Its glassy eye stares coldly back at me. After an eternity, I bring down the hilt of my knife and hit it hard on the top of the head. It flops a few more times, then goes still.

  I start gutting the fish and scale it like I remember seeing on some TV show once. I don’t remember it being such a disgusting mess, though. A whole lot of blood for a small fish. I seriously wish I’d caught a bag of Oreos instead, or a giant ham sandwich. I’m not a huge fish fan, and the prospect of stepping into the new role of fish serial killer isn’t helping at all.

  When I was a little kid, back in Korea, Mom used to make fish in the only way I liked it, with a hot bowl of steaming rice and plenty of banchan. I’m almost homesick for it, except that I don’t really know what homesickness is. Maybe I’m just sick. I try to blur my thoughts and refocus them on my mom’s face, but I can’t see it. I can feel her arms around me, above the heated floor of our room. But I can’t see her face.

  I look down and there’s a dead animal in my hands. For a moment, I wonder how it got there.

  Pay attention, Hector.

  My hands are bloodied and slippery, and now I reek like pond scum. The scales fly everywhere when I scrape the body with my knife. I must have at least four or five on my face. But soon, I’m done. I’ve got food.

  I rinse my hands and the headless, gutted fish with bottled water. As I head back to my camp, the thin curl of white smoke appears above the tree line about a mile away again. It’s on the way back, so I head toward it, hoping it’s what I think it is.

  Taking the path back to the camp, I find the source of the smoke. It’s a tiny little cottage, hidden from shore by a layer of maple trees devoid of leaves. The cottage seems dilapidated until I realize it’s only weathered, not abandoned. Thin pines grow close, hugging the walls. A curlicue of smoke rises from a stone chimney, and the windows are all closed up with some battered-looking metal shutters. There’s no peeking inside this house. Still, it’s small, and she must have broken in. No one on the island would have stayed here, and I doubt anyone would stock it with food to waste over the winter.

  I take out my knife and saw the tiny fish in half, then leave part of it on the stone step of the back door. I walk away quickly. Hopefully a fox won’t get it before she does.

  There’s always more fish to catch. Anyway, I owe her for the water-boiling comment, and for something else. It was nice to not think about myself for a while.

  At the thought, I jog back and leave the other half of the fish on the step, too.

  Chapter Eight

  ANDA

  It begins with the fish.

  I find it on the back step of the cottage, a small corpse of an offering. At first, my nose flares at the scent. It’s beheaded, chopped in two, and smeared with blood. Scales stick to it here and there, violently displaced from that unnaturally smooth skin. The belly has been inexpertly torn open in the tenderest of places, anus to gills, leaving a jagged maw with fascia and silken skin hanging in ribbons.

  There is only one person who could have left such a thing. The boy.

  Is he trying to scare me? Is it a warning, a herald of what he might do to me? The air pressure around me drops like a stone, and I draw the clouds about me. Mist dampens my forehead with comfort as I stare at the carcass. And then my father’s good sense enters my brain.

  Anda, it said. It’s food. He’s trying to feed you. He worries for your body.

  It is kindness.

  “Oh.” I stand there dumbly for a full five minutes, until I finally pick up the pieces with my hands and bring them inside. I rinse them out with cooled, boiled water and place them, small and lonely, on a plate. I stare at them for at least an hour before deciding what to do. I dig into the small trove of cookbooks that Father kept in the kitchen cupboard and study the “sea delights” section. Every word is a bit of prayer.

  Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.r />
  Dip gently in an egg wash.

  Dredge thoroughly in cornmeal, well-seasoned.

  Fry in butter until golden brown.

  Serve with a wedge of lemon.

  I only have a few eggs. Father left me with enough food to last a month. But the eggs will go bad anyway, so I use one and follow the recipe instructions as if they were sacred law. The skillet soon hisses with browning butter, and I lay the pieces in. Droplets of hot fat skip out of the pan and hit my skin, making me dance and dodge, squealing. My face near the stove feels scorched, and I burn my left fourth finger.

  I laugh the entire time.

  Finally, they are done. I burned half of the fish, but the cottage smells of good, cooked food, and the walls smile at me. Father has tried to do this for me. He’d create dishes to tempt me to eat. Berries like jewels, so pretty that they made me cry. Or cubes of cheese that I wouldn’t touch, because they smelled of their true origins—of rotted, curdled, glandular secretions. His care was only suitable for a normal human girl, because it’s all his mind can imagine. He tries, so hard. But his attempts are slippers that don’t fit, that chafe at my edges constantly.

  But this one viciously murdered fish feels just right for someone like me.

  Too fitting.

  I find a piece of nice clean newspaper from the stack by the fire and wrap half of the fish in the paper, watching the oil stain the newsprint with dots of dark gray. I study the gift I’ve made, cradling it in my hands. A strange sensation tickles my fingertips.

  I believe it’s called pride.

  And then I leave the cottage. It is easy to find him, though it’s dusk. I go to the last place we’d seen each other and follow his footprints to the camping shelter where he’s made his new home. From a distance, his footsteps shuffle a quiet rhythm. His blurred form moves about inside.

  I watch him enter a patch of light where the tired sun carelessly appears for a second. He runs his hand through his dark hair and touches his stubbly cheeks with wonder, as if time had sneaked up on him and surprised him with the truth that he is, in fact, a young man now. He stands inside his shelter and looks out, but I can tell that his eyes are focused inward. He is thinking, seeing something I cannot.

  I feel left behind.

  I don’t like it.

  But I am here, Anda. I will never leave you alone.

  I dismiss her voice, trying to concentrate.

  Usually when campers come to the island, they busy themselves with hiking. They point at the mergansers and grebes that alight on the waters. They swat at the thirsty mosquitoes and pore over trail maps. They never see me. But this boy has seen me. Something, inexplicably, has changed. I can smell it in the air.

  Suddenly, as if nudged by a thought, the boy gathers his fishing gear and leaves, heading for the shore.

  I’m tempted to follow him, but my hands are full and that isn’t my purpose. Carefully, I push at his shelter door, which opens with a traitorous creak. Inside, it’s starkly empty, compared to when the others come. They bring bottles of oily insecticide, complicated cooking units, and expensive water bottles. They hang clothes from the trees that are always some shade of khaki. Their shoes are sturdy, with bountiful straps and colorful laces.

  This boy has one bag, and his belongings remain nestled inside, terrified of abandonment. I watch the bag, wondering if it will speak to me. But there are no murmurs of filth or desecration. There are dark things, yes, but they hide skillfully and won’t reveal themselves to me. I concentrate harder, prying, as fingers would do on a closed oyster. Still, I hear nothing.

  I hesitate with my newspaper packet of cooked fish. Finally, I decide to leave it on the floor by his sleeping bag, but just before I place it there, the wind enters the shelter.

  Do not, Anda.

  Do not.

  The cool air twists about my ankles, and she tries to pull me away. But it is just wind, and the wind is part of me, too. I hear a sigh of disappointment when I place the parcel on the wooden bed. Then I run home.

  All the way back, she berates me.

  “I didn’t start this,” I explain aloud. “He started it first. I’m paying him back. Now we’re even.”

  You’re using reason. You’re defensive.

  “I am?” I wonder. It’s a delightful sensation. Foreign. “Why, yes. Yes, I suppose I am.”

  When I reach the door to the house, something isn’t right. Something in my center, a gnawing. When I enter the kitchen, the scent of butter and salty fish assail my nose, pulling me forward. The cast-iron frying pan is now cold and glossy with congealed brown butter and bits of crusty skin. I lift it to my face and take a cautious lick. I lick it until it’s clean.

  So this is what hunger feels like.

  Chapter Nine

  HECTOR

  Shelter, shelter, shelter.

  Outside of eating enough, it’s my main goal right now. If I’m going to survive here until I turn eighteen, I need shelter. It’s all I should be thinking about, but things keep happening. Weird things.

  Today it was a hat.

  It was sitting on the ground at my campsite. I knew it hadn’t been tossed there by the wind. First of all, there’s nothing left behind on this island. The campers practically spit-shine the pine needles, they leave it so pristine. Also, the hat brim was weighted down with about twenty pounds’ worth of rocks to keep it from blowing away.

  Kind of overkill, but charming anyway.

  I’ve seen tourists wear these kinds of hats. The ones with the floppy brim and an elastic cord that cinches under your chin, because how else will muggers know you’re ripe for the picking? Normally, I wouldn’t be caught dead in something like this, but I know she watches me. Yesterday, I spent the whole afternoon squinting into the sun and cursing when I went fishing. It’s hard to fish when one hand is being used as a visor. Hence the hat.

  I don’t often see her, but there are other clues.

  Two days ago, I froze my ass (and arms, and legs, and junk) off after a quick dive in the lake water to bathe. The shower units at Windigo have been turned off, and I couldn’t stand my own stink anymore. I had to wrestle on dry clothes over dripping wet skin. Not fun. The next morning, there was a tea towel hung on the tree outside my shack. Which means she saw me naked. Jesus, yes, she saw me naked.

  Two weeks ago, it was a battered old badminton birdie. What do they call it? Oh, yeah. A shuttlecock. The kind with the plastic feathers and the little white snub tip. A few days had gone by and I hadn’t seen her. I had gotten caught up with my plan to winter-proof my shelter. I’d tried but failed to break into the ranger’s quarters—the doors were steel and the window too small to slip through. So it was this camping shelter or nothing. The front wall is basically one huge screen, and it’s got to be covered. I’d spent days and days gathering broken tree limbs, or sawing them off myself, getting my hands all gummy with sap.

  And it’s hard to work on shelter when I’m so hungry. Twenty-four hours a day, my empty stomach screams at me. I’m ravenous when I sleep, if that’s even possible. I’ve already eaten through all my food supplies. My attempts to ration spectacularly failed after four days with no fish. The dreams of Whoppers and crisp, salty fries and Wendy’s Frosty shakes don’t help. My pants are already hanging on my hips more, and I’m tired all the time.

  But tiredness and hunger aren’t the worst. I can’t stop thinking.

  I think about Dad, and if he’s talked to my uncle about whether they’ve found me. If he really, truly needs to leave Germany to come figure out where I am. Or I think about my mom. Is she happier in Seoul without me? Does she still eat Botan Rice Candy, or did she really only buy that for me?

  I remember what it was like to wake up after hours of oblivion, my mouth dry and rancid. Seeing the newest Halo for Xbox on my bed where my uncle had left it. Maybe twenty bucks. Something that says sorry. Also, shut up.

  And then I would start forgetting about my shelter, about surviving, about hunger, and my mind would become a
cesspool of thoughts I don’t want or need. And that’s when I’d see it.

  This broken little shuttlecock, nestled in my sleeping bag. I put it in my pocket, went back to sawing off branches, and spent those hours and hours pondering why the fuck is a shuttlecock on a nature preserve in the middle of Lake Superior? Actually, maybe that’s why. Because she knows, somehow, that when I have nothing to think about but myself, I start longing for a cigarette butt. I start reaching for my knife.

  I haven’t tried to hurt myself since she stopped me, days ago.

  So in between shelter-building, I’ve become her fishmonger. A really sucky fishmonger. I fish every day, but I’m not lucky enough to catch a fish every time. Still, I’m getting better and better at it. Feldtmann Lake has become a favorite place to go, despite the long-ass ten-mile hike. I know which shady spots are the best, and the fact that the fish bite most when it rains a little in the early mornings. The rod and reel have become an extension of my body when I cast. The fine monofilament begins to make a proud callus between my thumb and forefinger when I feel the line for bites.

  For a while, we had this pattern. I’d spend all morning fishing. If I was lucky, I’d be able to leave a fish cleaned for her on her back step. I always wait by the back door and listen carefully, but I don’t hear a creak or a whisper inside that house. And I don’t try to say anything, or knock. Talking is so damn complicated. It involves explaining things, like who I am and why I’m here. She doesn’t try to chat me up, either. I relish this wordlessness we have.

  Meanwhile, there’s some sort of weird wind current where she lives. The gales there always push hard at my back. Tiny pebbles have bounced along the ground and hit my shins. Twigs smack my hands like an old schoolmarm with a ruler. The air around that house hates me or something.

  Then I’d go back to camp, work on weaving fir tree branches together with what rope I have. I make sure they point downward and overlap, so they’ll shed rain. During my breaks, one of my precious matches goes to boiling a gallon of lake water for the next day. I’d brew some spruce tip tea, wishing it was chunky soup, and chew some of the hard resin I’d gathered. It’s a nightmare version of gum—crumbly at first, before it threatens to lock your jaws together forever, but at least I get to chew on something. I’d boil the fish bones from the day before and make a broth, before I inevitably cave and inhale a remaining precious handful of nuts or dried fruit from my bag. And then I’d saw and break more branches for the next day, just so I could have my back turned for about an hour. And she’d deliver half a cooked fish to me by early evening.